‘A muzzle on elected officers’: NDAs ‘cloak’ Louisiana’s largest enterprise developments
This story was produced in partnership with the Springboard Mission at Kind Investigations.
In November final 12 months, Abigail Whittington heard there is likely to be a knowledge heart coming to her hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana.
She had considerations about the way it may impression her group. The large warehouse-like services that energy cloud computing, synthetic intelligence, and streaming providers are infamous for his or her urge for food for electrical energy and water, and for bringing noise, air pollution, and heavy development into the neighborhoods the place they’re constructed.
She wished to know extra. She tried asking elected officers, together with her mayor and Bossier and Caddo Parish state senators and representatives. Not one of the officers she requested gave her a solution.
Lots of them had signed nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) — authorized contracts that prohibited them from disclosing confidential data.
On Feb. 23, she discovered what they have been hiding. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry introducedAmazon is investing $12 billion in synthetic intelligence knowledge facilities with a number of campuses in Shreveport and Bossier Parish. Landry known as the mission the “largest funding within the historical past of Northwest Louisiana.”
Previous to the Amazon announcement, the identification of the corporate and the character of the event have been hid from the general public.
“I believe it’s bullshit that any elected official can signal an NDA a few mission that’s coming to the individuals’s metropolis,” Whittington mentioned. “And I believe that every one of our elected officers have to keep in mind that they work for us and we voted them in.”
Elected officers signing NDAs is a brand new and rising apply in Louisiana beneath the Landry administration.
Data obtained by the Gulf States Newsroom and Kind Investigations from Louisiana Financial Growth (LED) — the state company centered on enterprise development — present no less than 50 public officers have signed an NDA since Landry took workplace. Not a single elected official signed an NDA with LED within the final 4 years of former Governor John Bel Edwards.
Not less than one official for each single parish within the state has signed an settlement, together with state representatives, state senators and Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, in addition to native officers like mayors, metropolis councilmembers, a sheriff, and a college board superintendent.
Financial growth officers say the NDAs are needed with a view to appeal to companies to Louisiana. Critics argue the agreements aren’t wanted for financial growth and solely profit company pursuits on the expense of the native communities the place developments involving public cash are deliberate with out public data.
Click on in your parish to see who signed an NDA
‘Possibly not a terrific factor’
The NDAs signed with LED use similar, broad language. They outline “Confidential Data” expansively to incorporate technical, monetary, or enterprise data shared a few potential firm. They usually bar the official disclosing any details about the mission.
LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois described the apply of elected officers signing NDAs with the company as a “very intentional choice” beneath the Landry administration.
The NDA course of in Louisiana operates on two tracks that may run concurrently. LED makes use of its personal standardized agreements to carry elected officers and state businesses into early-stage negotiations. However for some initiatives, corporations typically carry their very own agreements drafted by their very own authorized groups.
Bourgeois confirmed Meta, as an illustration, required everybody concerned in its Hyperion knowledge heart negotiations to signal a Meta-specific NDA earlier than they might take part. LED’s agreements, she mentioned, cowl the broad universe of mission discussions, whereas company-specific ones govern the extra delicate particulars.
The NDAs are “basic” to financial growth work, Bourgeois mentioned, and with out them, LED wouldn’t have the ability to efficiently negotiate with companies.
She gave a number of the explanation why the agreements are needed: a publicly traded firm might not have the ability to disclose mission plans to its shareholders earlier than a proper announcement; an organization scouting a number of states doesn’t need Louisiana to know what, for instance, Mississippi is providing, or vice versa; and a enterprise might not need opponents to understand it’s eyeing a selected area in any respect.
Holding these particulars locked down, she argued, is what permits Louisiana to remain aggressive — and what makes the Landry administration’s “entire of presidency method” potential, bringing extra officers into negotiations earlier with out risking a leak that might price the state the deal fully.
“The irony is that we use NDAs to not be extra cloaked,” Bourgeois instructed the Gulf States Newsroom and Kind. “We use NDAs to be extra forthcoming.”
However some officers have had a special expertise. Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux, who instructed the Gulf States Newsroom and Kind that he signed an NDA for the primary time in his three-year tenure on the request of an organization with a “main mission”, mentioned that he has beforehand participated in enterprise discussions as mayor with out having to signal NDAs. He wouldn’t establish the character of the mission or the corporate behind the settlement.
The Gulf States Newsroom made a number of makes an attempt to ask all 50 officers who signed an NDA with LED about why they did so and whether or not they had considerations concerning the apply. Solely two moreover Arceneaux answered our questions.
State Rep. Joseph Orgeron, a Republican from Golden Meadow, mentioned the NDA he signed — tied to the Hyundai metal mill in Ascension Parish — was the one one he’d ever signed as an elected official. He mentioned he doesn’t remorse it, however that it’s “possibly not a terrific factor” if “each courting of LED for a enterprise requires NDAs.”
Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser mentioned he signed one to take part in discussions a few potential golf match. That mission turned out to be the LIV Golf match — a league backed by a Saudi Arabian wealth fund value billions. Following these discussions, Nungesser mentioned that at Landry’s request, the state legislature allotted $7 million to fund internet hosting the occasion.
Nungesser wrote that he’s “at all times believed in full disclosure to the general public of any and all dealings with authorities except it must be stored quiet when competing in opposition to one other state or entity.”
Not everybody in Baton Rouge agrees. State Rep. Danny McCormick, a Republican who represents rural Caddo Parish — the place the Amazon knowledge heart will likely be constructed — instructed the Gulf States Newsroom the NDAs exist for a less complicated cause.
“They don’t need the little individuals to know what they’re doing till after they’ve performed it,” he mentioned.
McCormick mentioned even he didn’t know concerning the Amazon mission earlier than the announcement. He mentioned he wasn’t requested to signal an NDA, possible “as a result of they know my emotions on it,” and he didn’t know different state senators and representatives in Caddo and neighboring Bossier Parish had signed them.
Below the agreements, officers are barred from disclosing not simply the main points of a mission, but in addition the title of the corporate concerned. Every mission is assigned a code title, like “Mission Gondor” or “Mission Quick and Livid.” Bourgeois mentioned LED and officers who signal the NDAs can “uncloak” the knowledge “when the time is suitable.”
Moreover, some state legislators — and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser — signed “common NDAs” which are “indefinite” and canopy any LED mission discussions. Many of those legislators sit on committees the place laws that might profit potential initiatives is mentioned. Bourgeois mentioned that in the event that they have been requested about LED developments on the legislature, they might not have the ability to talk about them.
When requested about cloaked initiatives by title, together with “Mission Lighthouse” and “Mission Starfire,” Bourgeois mentioned she couldn’t reply, even when she knew the reply, due to NDAs.
Did my elected official signal an NDA?
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‘A muzzle on an elected official’
Critics say the NDAs do the alternative of what Bourgeois claims — not bringing extra stakeholders to the desk, however locking the general public out of choices that instantly have an effect on their lives.
“The precise purpose is to stop public enter into what are sometimes very contentious negotiations, to attempt to postpone revealing to the general public particular particulars concerning the mission that they may not like till as late within the course of as potential,” mentioned Pat Garofalo, director of state and native coverage on the American Financial Liberties Mission.
Louisiana is much from alone, Garofalo mentioned. He’s tracked the apply for years, tracing the aggressive use of NDAs in financial growth to Amazon’s 2018 competitors for a second headquarters, when the corporate required authorities officers in competing jurisdictions to signal one.
“The gives received into the billions of {dollars} as a result of no one knew what anyone else in different jurisdictions have been doing,” Garofalo mentioned.
Tech corporations, he mentioned, have normalized it throughout the trade ever since.
Garofalo additionally rejected the state’s argument that NDAs promote competitors. By stopping officers from sharing what an organization has supplied in different states and localities, he mentioned NDAs really take away the power to barter for a greater deal, handing extra leverage to the company and enabling a race to the underside amongst competing jurisdictions.
The apply has confronted backlash. Different states have taken steps to stop public officers from signing NDAs. Final 12 months, the Michigan home handed a invoice that might forestall legislators from signing NDAs. California banned the apply.
Bruce Hamilton, director of the First Modification Clinic at Tulane Regulation Faculty, raised deeper considerations about what the apply means for democratic governance. He described the NDAs as “weaponizing a contract that places a muzzle on an elected official.”
“Authorities enterprise is the general public’s enterprise,” Hamilton mentioned. “When NDAs are utilized in authorities to silence public officers or make the general public’s enterprise much less clear, everybody in Louisiana suffers.”
Massive industrial initiatives in Louisiana do go by a number of public-facing processes earlier than they’re closing. Louisiana Division of Environmental High quality permits for main services require a public remark interval, and the Louisiana Public Service Fee — whose members are elected — should approve vitality service agreements earlier than a big, power-hungry mission could be served by the grid.
However in December 2025, the Public Service Fee voted 4-1 to undertake a brand new “lightning velocity” rule that accelerates the timeline for approving energy crops tied to industrial developments like knowledge facilities. That got here on high of Governor Landry’s September 2025 equally named “Mission Lightning Velocity” government order, directing state businesses to fast-track allowing broadly.
Hamilton mentioned the mixed impact of NDAs and accelerated allowing quantities to a scientific removing of public participation from the method.
“I believe can solely be a foul factor, finally, for native communities,” he mentioned.
‘Too late for any kind of democratic involvement’
In response to questions on what recourse constituents have when their elected officers can’t reply direct questions due to NDAs, Bourgeois mentioned nobody ought to count on their representatives to reveal each element of ongoing negotiations, and argued that communities who don’t need sure developments ought to merely zone in opposition to them prematurely.
“If the priority is {that a} group doesn’t need a knowledge heart,” Bourgeois mentioned, “then put these insurance policies in place from the start, not when a mission comes.”
Placing the burden on group members to anticipate developments of their space is solely unrealistic, critics say.
Hamilton mentioned there’s a significant distinction between a constituent demanding a each day accounting of each negotiation and a constituent asking a direct query a few particular mission that will likely be constructed of their neighborhood. The latter, he argued, isn’t an unreasonable expectation — it’s the minimal baseline of consultant authorities.
“The truth that these NDAs are muzzling elected representatives means they’ll’t talk in any respect,” Hamilton mentioned. “So it’s really not that excessive as she portrayed it as residents needing day-to-day accounting, however the truth that we’d like extra common suggestions and enter within the enterprise of presidency.”
The zoning argument has its personal issues. Hamilton famous that communities can’t fairly be anticipated to proactively regulate in opposition to each sort of growth that doesn’t but exist of their space — significantly when new industries, like large-scale AI knowledge facilities, emerge sooner than native governments can reply.
Garofalo put it extra bluntly. The zoning argument misses a extra basic level: by the point a mission is publicly introduced, there may be nothing left to barter. The deal is finished.
“You might be explicitly stopping that democratic suggestions by signing one in every of these NDAs,” he mentioned.
The sensible consequence of that dynamic performed out in Shreveport. Residents like Whittington couldn’t get solutions from their elected officers about what was coming as a result of they’d signed NDAs.
And by the point Amazon’s $12 billion mission was introduced, the query of whether or not or not Shreveport wished it had already been answered for them.
Sophia Anderson contributed knowledge visualization for this investigation. This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.
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